This invention relates to musical instrument pickups. More particularly this invention relates to providing a musical instrument pickup with improved sensitivity between magnetic pole pieces of the musical instrument pickup assembly. Also, this invention relates to providing a musical instrument pickup capable of fitting within a limited space wherein the musical instrument pickup achieves an output similar to that of a typical musical instrument pickup and a reduction in noisy interference while still maintaining desirable and recognizable tonal characteristics.
Certain musical instruments, especially electric guitars and other electric stringed instruments, typically use a magnetic transducer to convert mechanical string vibrations into electrical signals. The electrical signals are subsequently amplified with an amplification system and “played” through a loudspeaker. A musician typically selects musical-instrument electronic components to achieve a particular musician-desired tonal quality. For example, a guitar player may prefer analog circuitry to digital circuitry to achieve a more “vintage” tone. A guitar player's tone is directly related to the selection of desired amplifiers, guitars, and pickups (in addition to the playing style, finger pressure, etc., of the guitar player). With respect to guitar pickups, many factors, such as the number of coil winds, wire types, magnets, etc., affect a musician's tonal quality. Tonal quality is important as it imparts an expressive element from a musician to a listener.
Typical electric guitars use single-coil pickups. These typical single-coil pickups are susceptible to noisy interference known as “sixty cycle hum”. Current solutions used to dissipate the noisy interference have a considerably different tonal quality than that of single-coil pickups. For example, “humbucking” pickups have a sound that is considered “fatter” and “thicker” than single-coil pickups that those knowledgeable in the art clearly are aware of and appreciate. Thus, there is a need for a musical instrument pickup that is less noisy than typical single-coil pickups, wherein the noise dissipation does not detract from the characteristic tonal quality of a single-coil pickup. Additionally, the embodiments, methods and concepts disclosed here extend the general applicability of the concepts disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/104,121 to some distinct and novel applications and provide for enhanced performance. In particular, the methods disclosed here will rectify the limitation of reduced field strength in the region between adjacent pole pieces with opposing magnetic fields by providing for a continuous string vibration sensing pattern in this region.